Joe Blog's A Day In The Life Of Your Average Joe

Escaping iTunes

Recently my parents, and my brother, have all been complaining that the computer downstairs is too slow...which...it is, I found out yesterday that it's a 5 year old install of Windows XP - already things don't look good.

Regardless, I had a think about what I could do. Reinstalling XP was the first thing that came to mind, but then I'd have to spend another 5 hours doing updates to it and reinstalling everything, which I abhor doing, as I'm sure many people can relate to. I then stopped and had a think about what they all *actually* use the PC for.

They use Office 2007, Internet Explorer/Firefox (the use of each varies between people), BBC iPlayer, and iTunes. That's actually just about all they use. Now, Office can be replaced with OpenOffice.org, that isn't really a problem, except for the huge UI change from the ribbon interface back to the menu's etc. Firefox is natively installed, and they're starting to use it more anyway. BBC iPlayer is web based, but the desktop client for Linux can be installed with Adobe Air...

This just leaves iTunes, and while I'm aware there are plenty of alternatives that can be used, they all lack the one massively important feature for the rest of my family. The iTunes Store.

They use it quite regularly, which presents a great problem. How can I switch them to Ubuntu but keep the iTunes store? A VM? A dual boot? Both would work, but a VM on a P4 isn't the most practical solution, even with 2GB RAM. A dual boot would essentially take me back to step 1, and Ubuntu would never get used.

So I'm in a bit of a pickle really...I've said I'll sort the computer out for them, but it's just a case of how it gets "sorted".